WISSAHICKON — The fight to save Mattison Avenue Elementary School from closing its doors just added one more voice to a growing number of supporters.

Following the footsteps of her colleague Dick Stanton, Wissahickon School Board member Barbara Ullery voiced her support for saving the school from the chopping block during the board’s Dec. 10 meeting.

Stanton issued his support during the Nov. 11 meeting, and Ullery said many of the arguments he made convinced her to follow suit.

“We have seen at our meetings that a great many Mattison parents prefer for their children to attend a smaller school,” she said, reading from Stanton’s remarks. “There’s a greater achievement gap at Mattison than at our other schools. The gap is magnified because we have a large population of parents that don’t speak English. Moving these children to another school within our district will not change that.”

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She then mentioned the point Stanton made about the term “Mattison kids” made by teachers at Shady Grove that has upset a number of parents and students who have said the term makes them feel inferior and different.

“We, the board members, have been elected to represent all the people in the school district, be they from Whitpain, Lower Gwynedd or Ambler,” she said.

Stanton’s suggestion to offer to Ambler residents a choice whether their child attend Mattison or Shady Grove, which would “avoid any future overcrowding at Mattison,” appealed to Ullery, she noted.

Ullery said she’s had “misgivings with the Head Start program at Mattison, since the issue was raised at the Oct. 8 hearing.” Of the 18 currently enrolled students, 11 are Latino or Hispanic, she said. The purpose of the program is to focus on literacy skills and early school inclusion and should Mattison Avenue close, it is likely to move to another school, she said.

“Since parents are responsible for getting their children to Head Start, and if the Mattison parents have transportation problems as has been frequently stated, I feel that moving Head Start would impact the future achievement of the Latino and Hispanic children,” she said.

Ullery said she hoped the rest of the board would consider both her and Stanton’s comments on the issue between now and the Jan. 14, 2013, final vote, because “if the school closes there will be no turning back.”

With the clock running out, many Mattison Avenue supporters also gave one last plea to save the school.

Ambler Mayor Bud Wahl focused his remarks on the impact the closure of the school would have on Ambler Borough.

“We’ve just finished a 40,000-square-foot office building that’s fully rented the train station. The shoe store, that used to be in Ambler, will be moving back into Ambler, next to Sherwin-Willams,” he said. “Bottom Dollar will be here in the spring. We will be adding a hundred more parking places to Ambler because of its success. The bank is going to put up a new building, and behind that has done a public/private partnership to put up a parking deck in Ambler. We have everything. We have a downtown that people congratulate me about everywhere I go. You close the school, you rip our heart out.”

Karen Palmer said she felt the Mattison Avenue supporters have been “very reasonable with ability to be unreasonable to .” She said she’s heard three different reasons regarding why the school closed. First was overcrowding, then financial reasons and finally an achievement gap.

“And that achievement gap will be reduced or completely diminished if I move my son to a different building?” she said. “Same teachers, same curriculum, different building. That seems pretty unreasonable.”

Daniel Fitzgerald said he feared while the school board’s goal is to create 21st century schools, it could ultimately anger three different groups of people in the process, endangering its own livelihood. The first are the supporters of Mattison Avenue, many of whom are already thinking about voting out members of the school board come next election. The second would be taxpayers, who could see an increase in taxes in order to pay for the changes the board wants to make. The final group would be the employees of the district, many of whom are already in a deep fight to get a new contract, who could be shown the door to help cut costs and lower spending.

“One thing you want to be careful of, the people who are very unlike each other but not very happy, starting with these folks,” he said, pointing to the Mattison Avenue supporters. “And with the employees and with your higher tax rate, you might be careful that the next school board election will be not one sleepy old thing like they’ve been in the past. They’ll be much more vigorous. I’d think through a little with what you’ve been doing … too many problems being solved in a short period of time.”